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IFrFOcia cVMtVraM •
culture and heritage
·amura·
156
However, the mariners per excellence of an-
tiquity were the Phoenicians. These brave sailors
cemented their prosperity in trade, not war. With
their large ships they carried up to 100 tons of
merchandise throughout the Mediterranean, as
well as the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It is even
said that they were the first to circle around Af-
rica, and even their possible arrival to America
is speculated, centuries before Columbus. With
them it became clear that traders were essential
for the discovery of new lands, because with their
ships roaming all coasts, they expanded the geo-
graphical knowledge of humanity and contacted
distant and different cultures.
After them, in the Mediterranean world,
Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans would come,
and they would raise great empires based on trade.
When Rome became the most powerful city in the
Mediterranean, merchant ships from Europe, Asia
and Africa arrived at the port of Ostia full of exotic
products to a market in constant growth.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, Chi-
nese and Japanese imposed their dominance in
Asian trade. Particularly, the powerful Chinese
empire would build the largest ships of antiquity,
only surpassed by Europeans until the eighteenth
century. In the Mesoamerican world things they
were not going as good. These peoples failed to
advance beyond simple canoes, which did not
prevent them to sail along the coastlines, com-
mercially connecting places as remote as the
Caribbean with the Andean world. In these lati-
tudes, maritime trade was also stimulating eco-
nomic development of indigenous peoples.
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